Monday Morning Catch-up: Kill The Gang of 8 Bill

On Monday at 5:30pm, the United States Senate will vote on the most sweeping immigration reform proposal it has considered in almost 3 decades – and it will do so having only seen the nearly 1200 pages of text for approximately 72 hours. Americans – including myself, my fellow senators and our staffs – are still trying to figure out exactly what is in the new Schumer-Corker-Hoeven “deal.”

Sound familiar? Pass it to find out what’s in it? Reminiscent of Obamacare, the lengthy amendment to replace the Gang of 8’s original bill was crafted behind closed doors and introduced late on Friday, after many members had left town. In the 2007 immigration debate, close to 50 amendments were considered. But this year, we have only debated 9 – with some of us being completely shut out.

Given only a weekend to review the language, we will now vote on whether to end a debate that never really began. To be clear – this is not a difficult vote. On process alone, we should all vote “no.“ This was by design – the President, Harry Reid and the Gang of 8 preferred all along to ram through a “deal,” and not have a real debate – just like Obamacare. Worse, just like Obamacare, the “deal” involved lots of horse-trading and buying off of votes at the last minute – a display of everything that is wrong with Washington, and one of the things I specifically campaigned against.

“If Gang of 8 bill passes, those newly legalized are exempted from ObamaCare. HUGE incentive for employers to hire them instead of Americans.”

Kessler, in his first published draft, said no such incentive exists in the Senate bill to hire provisional immigrants over U.S. citizens. Then, informed of his error by commenters , he acknowledged that this incentive does exist. But Kessler argues it is of little importance and — by failing to retract his Pinocchios — implies that raising concern about it equals a lie.

Before detailing many of Kessler’s mistakes — factual and analytical — here is a disclaimer and a bit of perspective so that readers bring an open mind to the facts.

In truth, my work is under attack as much as Cruz’s comment. Kessler links to three of my articles and blog posts and writes that I have “aggressively pushed” the same line of reasoning articulated here by Catherine Frazier, Cruz’s press secretary:

The U.S. Constitution does not say that the paramount duty of government is to “Celebrate Diversity” or to “embrace multiculturalism” or to give “every willing worker” in the world a job. The Premable to the U.S. Constitution does not say the Republic was established to keep illegal alien families together, provide illegal alien college tuition discounts, or promote immigrant welfare magnets. It says the Constitution was established “to provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty.”

And “secure the border, period” — not “secure the border first” as a pesky precondition to a mass illegal alien bailout — is an ongoing, never-ending obligation of our government.

Border security is not something you finish and hastily check off a list in order to move on to another politically correct campaign promise. It is the most basic duty of government and it remains the federal government’s biggest failure.

Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) wrote an article for Human Eventstoday, defending his immigration reform proposals. A sample, in which he discusses the border security provisions of the Corker-Hoeven amendment:

The Republican Border Surge Plan was developed with input from border patrol officials, border state officials, and security experts. It stipulates that no illegal immigrant can even apply to become a legal permanent resident of the U.S. until at least ten years have elapsed and until five security triggers are achieved.

Marco Rubio (R-FL) has seen his favorables drop over the course of the year, according to a new Rasmussen Report poll. Fifty-eight percent of GOP voters have a favorable opinion of Rubio in these latest figures. Those numbers are “down 10 points since May and 15 points since February. Sixteen percent (16%) of GOP voters have an unfavorable opinion of him, while 25% are undecided.”

After Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) admitted the amendment he and Sen. John Hoeven (R-ND) offered to the immigration bill will not improve immigration law enforcement, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) National Council president Chris Crane told Breitbart News he is shocked lawmakers would still want to pass the bill.

“So that’s the answer from U.S. Senators,” Crane, an ICE agent and a former marine, told Breitbart News exclusively on Sunday morning. “They know the bill is bad but plan to pass it anyway? With billions of taxpayer dollars to be spent and the safety of the public on the line, Senators plan to pass the buck to the House with hopes they might fix it? Anti-enforcement special interests have succeeded in pressuring the Senate from doing what’s best for America. This is why America has lost faith in its lawmakers.”

The gang of 8 in the Senate wants a cloture vote on immigration. They shouldn’t, because the bill isn’t very good. It’s another lesson in how the sausage is made in Washington DC.

Clearly, the US needs high quality immigrants to come here. We want to be that shining city on the hill, and a destination country for people all over the world. One of the portfolio companies I invested in, Brilliant, identifies those immigrants. Stories like the one I wrote about yesterday are the epitome of the American Dream.

Senator Rand Paul told liberal CNN host Candy Crowley on State of the Union he will not vote for the immigration bill.

“We’ve thrown a lot of money at a lot of problems in our country. To me, what really tells me that they’re serious is to let Congress vote on whether the border is secure. If the people in the country want to be assured that we will not get another ten million people to come here illegally over the next decade, they have to believe that they’re going to vote through their Congress.”

You can always count on the White House to react strongly to “internal” threats.

Yes, the folks who could care less who is blowing up whom in Syria, Libya or Boston, takes people who snitch on them very seriously.

Their newest weapon is a program called “Inside Threat,” which, according to McClatchy, is designed not to just to clamp down on classified leaks, but rather to make sure ANY unauthorized disclosure of ANY information that make them look bad will leave a mark on the miscreant leaker.

Given the proclivities of the administration to impale themselves on the sharp edge of many of their policies, it’s no wonder they have no time for the economy, jobs, the war in Afghanistan, the immigration reform, budgets, national security briefings and all the other effluvia of governing.

What with vacations and stopping the whistle blowers, time is short.

“President Barack Obama’s unprecedented initiative, known as the Insider Threat Program,” writes McClatchyDC.com, “is sweeping in its reach. It has received scant public attention even though it extends beyond the U.S. national security bureaucracies to most federal departments and agencies nationwide, including the Peace Corps, the Social Security Administration and the Education and Agriculture departments. It emphasizes leaks of classified material, but catchall definitions of ‘insider threat’ give agencies latitude to pursue and penalize a range of other conduct.”

It’s received scant attention because the media, which makes money to report this type of abuse of power, is hoping still that Bo loves them, even though they have had some tiffs of late.

Just like the wife who excuses the abusive husband, they’ve deluded themselves that really, come on, he means well.

1. Zimmerman Trial Opening Statement and Prosecution case– 9 a.m.

We’ll have our live coverage, including video embed and live Twitter stream, as well as commentary during the day and in an end-of-day wrap up from Andrew Branca. If you haven’t seen his coverage so far, you’ve missed out.

2. Supreme Court — 10 a.m.

We almost certainly will get one of the big 4 decisions from the Supreme Court — Gay Marriage/DOMA, Voting Rights Act, Affirmative Action.

I’m guessing Voting Rights Act. We’ll have coverage as decisions are released starting at 10 a.m.

3. Senate Amnesty Vote — 5:30 p.m..

This is an attempt by Democrats aided and abetted by anywhere from 10-15 Republicans, to damage the rule of law by rewarding law-breakers and making fools of law-abiders, and giving Janet Napolitano sweeping power to disregard the law in her discretion.

An abortionist and his local Planned Parenthood affiliate sued in federal court Thursday to stop a law that would tell women considering abortion that an unborn child is not a part of her own body and that unborn children can feel pain by the third trimester of pregnancy.

Abortionist Orrin Moore, director of the Overland Park Planned Parenthood, sought to block a provision of the Kansas 2013 Pro-Life Protections Act that requires abortionists to inform mothers who seek abortions that they are ending the life of a “whole, separate, unique, living human being.”

According to Moore, the statement that an abortion terminates the life of a separate human being is “a misleading statement of philosophical and/or religious belief.”

He claims in his lawsuit that the law violates his First Amendment right to free speech by forcing him to say something he personally believes to be untrue.

If I want to call the moon the sun – that’s my First Amendment right, dammit. And no one is allowed to tell me otherwise, or they’re infringing on my rights!

President Obama’s trip to Africa starting Wednesday is drawing criticism for its vast expense, estimated at up to $100 million, but presidential travel has become an easy target for critics over the years no matter who is in the White House.

President Bill Clinton was roundly criticized for making his own Africa trip in 1998. The cost of the visit, which was considered excessive at the time, was $42.7 million, according to the Government Accountability Office, and that tabulation didn’t include Secret Service expenses.

Clinton’s trip to Asia in 2000 was even more expensive, and Clinton was a lame duck then, only months away from leaving office. His Asia visit cost taxpayers $63.5 million. This included not only the expenses for operating Air Force One but for more than 60 other aircraft to transport U.S. personnel and equipment halfway around the world. […]

It won’t be for a while, as this session of the Supreme Court will come to an end this week with the release of its most controversial decisions of the term. However, next year, the court will hear arguments on what constitutes a recess, and how much power the President has to make appointments without the advice and consent of the Senate:

President Obama’s recess appointments to a federal agency– made without Senate confirmation– will be reviewed by the Supreme Court, a major constitutional test of executive power. …

The case sets up a high-stakes Supreme Court fight between the other two branches of government. Oral arguments will be held in public session later this year or early next.

An Interfax source reports that the flight to Cuba would pass through US airspace, allowing the US to ground the flight.

Edward Snowden is expected to to fly to Cuba this morning, after spending the night in Moscow’s airport. There is speculation his final destination is Ecuador, where they are “considering” his request for asylum. Ecuador’s Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino said Snowden’s request involved “freedom of expression and … the security of citizens around the world.”

Several sources have confirmed that Snowden had checked in for a flight to Havana, scheduled to leave at 6:05amET.

The following report from the Russian paper Izvestiya notes that Snowden will meet with Russian intelligence, that his flight to Russia was coordinated with the government and WikiLeaks, and that he managed to hoodwink the press who thought he would be on flight to Cuba.

In a new research paper, Andreas Madestam (from Stockholm University), Daniel Shoag and David Yanagizawa-Drott (both from the Harvard Kennedy School), and I set out to find out how much impact the Tea Party had on voter turnout in the 2010 election. We compared areas with high levels of Tea Party activity to otherwise similar areas with low levels of Tea Party activity, using data from the Census Bureau, the FEC, news reports, and a variety of other sources. We found that the effect was huge: the movement brought the Republican Party some 3 million-6 million additional votes in House races. That is an astonishing boost, given that all Republican House candidates combined received fewer than 45 million votes. It demonstrates conclusively how important the party’s newly energized base was to its landslide victory in those elections, and how worried Democratic strategists must have been about the conservative movement’s momentum.

The Tea Party movement’s huge success was not the result of a few days of work by an elected official or two, but involved activists all over the country who spent the year and a half leading up to the midterm elections volunteering, organizing, donating, and rallying. Much of these grassroots activities were centered around 501(c)4s, which according to our research were an important component of the Tea Party movement and its rise.

The bottom line is that the Tea Party movement, when properly activated, can generate a huge number of votes-more votes in 2010, in fact, than the vote advantage Obama held over Romney in 2012. The data show that had the Tea Party groups continued to grow at the pace seen in 2009 and 2010, and had their effect on the 2012 vote been similar to that seen in 2010, they would have brought the Republican Party as many as 5 – 8.5 million votes compared to Obama’s victory margin of 5 million.

Some may remember that after the Boston marathon bombing, a Saudi National named Abdul Rahman Ali Al-Harbi, who had been hospitalized after the blast, was identified as a ‘suspect’, then a ‘person of interest’, and then as a witness / innocent bystander. Walid wrote extensively about the Al-Harbi clan in Saudi Arabia.

Now, this Saudi National Al-Harbi has broken his silence via an interview with a woman named Amina Chaudary. As Diana West points out, in the interview, Chaudary pushes the narrative that there was no cause for alarm when it came to Al-Harbi; the DHS document which shows the Saudi National as being set for deportation under 212, 3B says otherwise, which all but torpedoes Chaudary’s credibility.

That leads us to – if you can believe it – former Deputy Chief of Staff to Hillary Clinton, Huma Abedin, who has extensive and irrefutable ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, through her family. When Rep. Michele Bachmann began getting attacked after naming Abedin in a letter to the State Department’s Deputy Inspector General, we began a list of Abedin’s defenders. When viewed in its totality, Republican Senators John McCain and Marco Rubio – along with House Speaker John Boehner – come off looking quite bad for being on that list.

You know who else is on that list?

A woman named Amina Chaudary, who made the list after publishing an article entitled, “We’re all Huma Abedins”. Guess what else? A woman with this very same name sat on the Board of the same Muslim Student Association (MSA) that Huma Abedin did – though at different times – at George Washington University (GWU).

According to Syrian Truth’s Facebook page, the above photo is of a toddler living in the Deir ez-Zor Governate in eastern Syria, bordering Iraq. She was tied up by members of the U.S.-supported “Free Syrian Army” — which is dominated by foreign, Sunni jihadis — and made to watch as her mother and father were killed for being Shia. Here is how the Obama administration is using your tax dollars — mockingly in the name of “freedom.”

Syrian Truth is a pro-Assad propaganda FB site, so this picture could have been staged…

Rhymes With Right: Frankly, I expect the jury to hang. Surely one juror will be adamantly supportive of conviction after the trial is completed. Surely one will have unshakeable reasonable doubt. Lord only knows what the remaining four will have to say — but it does not matter. Just having those two is a recipe for a hung jury.

What happens after the verdict will be more telling than the verdict itself.

Despite being the subject of a criminal investigation, the 44 year old activist, who is unemployed and currently living with his sister in California, has kept a fairly high profile in the media.

He has written a piece for Salon, a national news website, in which he acknowledged making the recording, and has gone on national television to imply that members of political action committees illegally attended the McConnell meeting.

He’s also given numerous interviews with local reporters. “Since I have not done anything nearly as egregious as anyone has alleged, I feel like I should not cower and hide,” he said.

Morrison is also a prolific twitter user who exchanged the following tweets with Dayspring on June 22:

3 thoughts on “Monday Morning Catch-up: Kill The Gang of 8 Bill”

“I did not leave the republican party, the republican party left me.” [borrowing a phrase here]

I think Rubio is going to be the biggest loser in this entire incident. People expect traitorous actions by the likes of McLame and Lohan, I don’t think they expected it from Rubio, a complete betrayal. Not only is his expectations of running for President done, he’ll be lucky to keep his seat next time around.

We lost this war when “Conservative Talk Radio” [Rush, Hannity, and many others] decided to give Rubio a pass because he was a conservative. They allowed him a lot of leash, until he was caught lying his @ss off. He [Rubio] went on Hispanic radio and said the Bill was giving them “Amnesty” first. Then claimed there was a translation problem, when there was no such thing. The “Cons” finally figured out they were being played, unfortunately for us it was too late.

<strong? Schmucky played the entire lot like a fine tuned fiddle. Rubio, Flake, the gop, and the Conservatives. He divided and he conquered. The House is our only hope, they cannot "pass" anything. If they do the two Bills will be conferenced and one Bill with most of the worst provisions will be included. Boner needs to grow a pair and pass nothing or else the entire Country is finished, done. We will all look like California.

Anything short of this and the gop will not take anything in the upcoming 2014 Elections, if fact I’ll predict they will lose seats they already have.

If this is any consolation, National Journal is reporting: Time’s Up. Immigration Won’t Pass This Year
Plenty of effort will be devoted to reform over the next month, but it will die in August, just like last time.

I wish there were some hope of this dying a natural death in the House, but I don’t. If Boner has his way it will be fast tracked through the House. To marginalize the Tea Party members and to save his own pathetic neck. I think there is “some” resistance to a Bill in the House that supports amnesty without Security first at the Border.

Schmucky has already threatened Boner with mass demonstrations if he resist anything that doesn’t support a “amnesty and a path to citizenship”. My bet is Boner caves!